


Remnant

by silverlake7169



Category: True Detective
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-27
Updated: 2014-09-27
Packaged: 2018-02-18 23:05:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2365322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverlake7169/pseuds/silverlake7169
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Rust shows up at Marty's house drunk in 'The Long Bright Dark', he's clearly trying desperately not to break down. What if he did?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remnant

Nothing could’ve prepared Marty for how Rust looked on the doorstep, small and sharp and scared like he’s facing down the electric chair. 

Standing in the sunroom now he looks held together by a thread, eyes so red-rimmed and skin so clammy Marty’s half-sure he’s going to ralph right on the rug Maggie’s mom bought them three Christmases back. Might actually improve the fucking thing. 

“Drink this,” he says, pressing a mug of tar-tough black coffee into Rust’s hand. 

“Myth.”

“What’s that?”

“Caffeine doesn’t have any effect on the metabolism of alcohol. Just gets you jacked on top of wasted.”

“You got any better ideas, I’m all ears, but maybe you should’ve thought about your metabolism before you showed up loaded in front of my girls.’

Rust keeps his eyes to the ground, drinks though the coffee’s still scalding hot. 

“So what, you don’t drink with me, you don’t drink with the guys after work, but you’ve gotta get this far gone just to get through an evening with me and mine?”

“No, Marty, it’s not like that,” Rust says in a rush, ferocious. “I didn’t mean to… I don’t drink, because I’ve had trouble with it before. Tonight was just… I was checking on a CI, ended up hanging around a bar for her. And sitting there, I just couldn’t think of a good reason not to.”

And there’s all kinds of ways that ought to piss him off, because of course having dinner with Marty and his family wasn’t a good enough reason for Rust Cohle to deny his fucking programming, and yet he’s finding it real hard to feel anything but a kind of ache. 

“This was a bad idea, coming here. Knew it before I said yes. Being around this, it’s no good,” Rust murmurs, turning away with a tilting step.

“‘This’? What are you saying, ‘this’?”

“I was married, for three years. We had a daughter.”

Marty gets a chill low in his spine, knows even before he hears the rest where this is going.

“A baby girl. Car accident, few days after her second birthday. She was riding her tricycle down our driveway.” 

Every word Rust says shivers in the air, his voice low and brittle. He doesn’t look at Marty at all. 

And Marty can’t stop looking at him.

“Your kid died?” 

Rust twitches inward with a sharp inhale like he’s collapsing on himself, coffee cup tilting way past 45 degrees and Marty darts forward to stop it spilling. His fingers wrap gentle around Rust’s wrist.

He can hear Rust’s breath coming in shallow hitches, and the ache in his chest sharpens. A few short hours back, when Rust was still smelling the psychosphere and describing the futility of existence, he’d never have dreamt he could feel this much for him.

In the hallway outside Maisie giggles, her tiny feet pad-pad-padding against the hardwood and Marty can’t stop himself thinking it. What it’d be to watch her die. 

He’d be a long way from what he is now, and probably nowhere near what Rust is either.

““Rust– Jesus. I’m sorry, man. I’m so sorry, I had no idea.”

Rust’s got quiet, but his face is pushed into his cupped hands and his body shudders tellingly every few seconds, those few kind words tilting him over the edge. 

Marty’s three-quarters decided to give him his privacy, actually starts towards the door before pulling himself up short. Because leaving Rust to cry alone in the dark doesn't sit right, and fuck if Marty’s going to give him any more ammunition to believe the world’s a pitiless hellhole. 

So when he puts a hand on Rust’s trembling shoulder and squeezes, rubs circles against his shoulder blades, he tells himself it’s mostly just to prove the asshole wrong. 

So too when Rust turns unsteadily and Marty lets him lean hard against his shoulder for a spell, bracing his fingers against too-prominent vertebrae. 

“Sorry. M’sorry. Too long since I’ve been around anything like family,” Rust shudders out, breath hot through the fabric of Marty’s shirt. “Didn’t plan for it.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s okay.”

If Rust’s lucky he’ll only half-remember this, which is just fine by Marty, and they’ll never speak of it either way. 

He puts Rust in the guest bedroom to sleep it off, and when he tries to explain this to Maggie she looks strange, like she understands something he doesn’t. 

“You did right to take him in,” is what she says at last, and kisses him hard.

Later, he pauses at the crack of the spare room door and watches Rust’s eyelids twitch in sleep, trying not to picture what’s behind them.


End file.
